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Wednesday July 16, 2008
The Game of Sorry
Sorry: Worthless or inferior; paltry: a sorry excuse.
Causing sorrow, grief, or misfortune; grievous: a sorry development.
Sorry
goings on in Barriere Lake (Algonquins), Middle East (Palestinians), US
courts (Omar Khadr), and Afghanistan - especially if Obama gets his day
in the sun.
There's a native protest over several days in the Ottawa area.
It seems that all the while Harper was making his apology to First
Nations peoples for what happened to them in the past, stuff was
happening at his behest in the present that didn't garner quite the
same amount of media attention.
Coup d'état in Indian Country
Community members say traditional leadership ousted by the Canadian government
If
you read the above article, you'll get a pretty clear idea of why
Barriere Lake community members are protesting in Ottawa. Basically
the government appointed a new governing council and ousted the duly
elected one. You know, regime change. It's being done all the time
now on behalf of big business, so why not right in our own backyard.
The
majority of the community (80%) don't like this one bit, but there are
agitators willing to forego democracy and tradition for the promise of
some unspecified monetary benefit, and the community is no longer very
peaceful.
Marylynn
Pouchachie says the last weeks have taken a toll on everyone, including
children, who have acted out the leadership rivalry with name-calling.
"I think the government has us where they want us, fighting with each
other and forgetting about the real issues," she said. "And they can
then keep exploiting our land and renegotiate the outstanding issues on
their terms."
Again,
I ask, doesn't this sound familiar? Scratch any "developing" country
and you'll see the same picture. Canada's resources have only just begun
to be violently depleted to grease the wheels and palms of the
so-called "free market".
But it's even more familiar than that. The very thing Harper apologized for is happening again:
...
the local school teachers have been replaced with teachers who do not
speak Algonquin, and the curriculum has been changed to eliminate
traditional teachings.
So basically, whenever the government
announces anything at all, think the opposite. And think about the
goals of the "free market" to know that any sop to the people is a
trick or a distraction from the brutal exploitation and cultural
genocide that's still in progress.
In fact the whole apology is thing is catching on. Australia has said sorry to its aborigines. Wonder what's in store for them now.
Do you suppose Israel will someday say sorry to the Palestinians?
Palestinians
In the case of the Palestinians, arable land and above all water are the underlying motivation for Israel, and 9/11
simply gave Israel permission to escalate by calling Palestinian
resisters of the occupation "terrorists". So Israel can now divide and
conquer under the guise of a "war on terror". But hey, deserts don't
"bloom" all by themselves - some people have to lose their homes,
starve and die to make that happen.
The Bullet has a two part analysis on the current situation that might interest you:
Palestine in the Middle East: Opposing Neoliberalism and US Power Part I Part II
And if you haven't read David Ray Griffin's non-hyped and methodical book on 9/11entitled "The New Pearl Harbor", here it is in .pdf format (requires Adobe Reader).
Omar Khadr
For anyone who hasn't yet seen the alleged Omar Khadr interrogation tapes, here they are.
I don't know if that's him or not. And I don't trust the CBC to know,
either. I'm also wondering how the tapes got loose. I can't imagine the
US military wanting to produce sympathy for him, so it seems a little
fishy.
But there's also a tape of a US Sgt.
who apparently was wounded in the skirmish in which Khadr was
apprehended, and the cold blooded arrogance and prejudice of this guy is
stunning to behold. It's bad enough that the US invades Afghanistan and
then calls the people who fight against being invaded "terrorists", but
this guy said that to call Khadr a soldier would be to insult all
Canadian soldiers, and he couldn't see the double standard illogic of
that.
I guess if the US ever does suffer an invasion, the people
resisting it should be prepared to be called "terrorists" - because
what you are called depends on whether or not you are dressed in a
uniform.
Someone down the road will apologize to you all when there's no danger of it making any difference.
The Sgt. thinks Khadr was the cold blooded one. He says
Khadr deliberately "waited" until the US soldiers were close enough so
that he could re-start a firefight they had decided was over, so that
he could kill them. But Khadr's actions were those of a soldier,
uniform or not - the enemy was coming at him and he did the best he
could to eliminate them.
That is, if any of these stories are
true. It seems odd that this Sgt. is a prosecution witness and yet is
allowed to go in front of a talk-show camera to say whatever he pleases.
Obama's vision for Afghanistan
Not incidentally, Barack Obama is talking about sending 7000 more US troops to Afghanistan. Hard to believe that "peace" activists are supporting this guy.
Not hard to believe is that some US troops are keen to go to Afghanistan.
Spc.
Grover Gebhart has spent nine months at a small post on a Sunni-Shiite
fault line in western Baghdad. But the 21-year-old soldier on his first
tour in Iraq feels he's missing the real war
With
the short attention span so common in youth these days, playing the
same old blood and guts video game is bound to get boring.
There's
a video game out now that splashes blood onto the inside of the screen
for reality effect. Some gamers think it gets in the way of the
action, and others rather enjoy it. Here are a couple of excerpts from
a video game forum:
"I
don't play games for logic, I play games (partly) for pointless
unnessesary violence, and people who play this game will press a button
which in turn will crush someone's head, which they meant to do, whilst
no one will press a button to have blood splash on the screen, so I'm
annoyed at this because this is something which serves no purpose to
the gameplay the storyline, or the overall enjoyment of the game, and
is forced upon us."
"when I first sawed a guy in half in Gears with the blood spraying
EVERYWHERE, it was awesome. I think it helps you feel more like a
killer"
Read the rest of them. It will give you an idea of why we're going to have plenty of cannon fodder and willing torturers for our unending wars.
And lots of people to say sorry to someday, a long way down the road.
yayacanada
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